Morphology of Modernism

Full-blown liberalism begins with the rejection of divine revelation. This revelation comes in historical events (Exod. 8–12; Luke 23–24:12), in personal experience (2 Cor. 12:1–6), and—most decisively—in words and propositions of absolute truth. Such revelation requires a fixed location—Scripture—where these truthful narratives, doctrinal syntheses, and decisive arguments are preserved. Gathering this revelatory material calls for divine inspiration to establish an accurate deposit of the truth (1 Cor. 2:7–13; Eph. 3:8–10; Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 2:13; 5:27; 2 Thess. 2:14, 15; 1 Tim. 4:6; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13, 14; 3:14–17). The final measure of truth, the canon, is identified with the Bible. Its words are an inspired deposit of revealed truth and consequently infallible and inerrant, and the source of doctrine and of spiritual conviction that leads to salvation. Moses, as well as other prophets and the apostles, were aware of the revelatory character of their message.

Once this foundation is removed, liberalism follows a predictable morphology. This essay traces that pattern through three stages: Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher replaced revealed truth with internal religious experience; William Newton Clarke imported this framework into American Baptist theology, systematically rejecting biblical inerrancy in favor of “common experience;” and Shailer Mathews demonstrated the logical endpoint—a Christianity stripped of doctrine, reduced to moralism and sentiment. Understanding this pattern equips believers to recognize liberalism’s subtle deceitful posturing as an enlightened Christianity, along with its mutations in every generation—including our own.

Kant and Schleiermacher: From Moral Intuition to Religious Feeling

Liberalism replaces revelation by an epistemological framework drawn from rationalism, empiricism, and existentialism. Special revelation becomes a fantasy and an insult to the intellect. Thus, doctrines of critical importance to the gospel are rejected as unscientific. Christianity is redefined. All truth, therefore, is reducible to principles of rational method and experimental observation. The third of these modernist commitments, existentialism, arose to rescue humanity from the utter skepticism and absence of transcendence produced by the first two.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) pioneered what he called the “categorical imperative,” or the idea that a person should act only in accord with moral principles that can be universally applied to everyone. But who gets to decide what is best for everyone? The door to existentialism was opened by his argument that from the categorical imperative one could deduce the existence of God. Efforts to systematize the implications of this universal moral sense meant that subjectivity and intuition would rule the development of religious thought for those who accepted the canonical status of Western science and philosophy. Religion would be developed from a heightened awareness of the moral sense.

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) accepted this overall worldview. Having been trained in the context of Pietism, Schleiermacher found Pietism’s internal spirituality to be the true element of religion, while rejecting its Bible-centered idea of truth and its acceptance of the objective reality of the cross and resurrection as determinative of reconciliation with God. He developed his theology around the concept of “immediate awareness” of absolute dependence on God. He conceived of knowledge of “redemption” as corporately experienced, rather than revealed or propositionally defined. Immediate awareness of absolute dependence also leads to awareness of sin and of grace. For Schleiermacher, Jesus is the channel of redemptive grace because of His immediate, unclouded, imperturbable consciousness of his sonship, a sonship that Christians share.

William Newton Clarke: Experience Replaces Scripture

This way of doing theology, bypassing closely reasoned biblical exegesis in favor of subjective philosophy, merged into American Christianity in general and Baptist theology in particular through the work of William Newton Clarke (1841–1911). Clarke was a progressive Baptist minister, theologian, and educator. In An Outline of Christian Theology,^[1] Clarke discussed religion in general and the concept of revelation. He asserted, “Religious experience results in the development of the spiritual nature of man, bringing it to the highest quality in affection, aspiration, and action.”^[2] Theology is “the intellectual presentation of the subject matter of religion.”^[3] Christianity, the highest of all religions, took its place in human history through the “self-revelation of God that … culminated in Jesus Christ.”^[4] In the Old Testament, a “gradual discovery of God on the part of men” constitutes the self-revelation of God. In Christ, after the critical scholars have separated the wheat from the chaff of the biblical record, we find that “he stood in unique relation to God, and gave unique expression to his character and will.”^[5] Jesus takes on the status of revelation, redeemer, purveyor of confidence in immortality, and every irreducible Christian truth by his unique perception of God’s character and humanity’s relation to Him.

God’s richest, most spiritual, and most effective self-expression to man was made in Christ—in what he was, in what he said and did, and in the fact that God gave him to the world. The heart of what we call Christian revelation is in Christ.^[6]

Christian revelation was not in writing at all, but in “act and fact;” the fact of this narrative is that Clarke denigrates written revelation all the way from Abraham through Moses to Christ.

“Thus it was not in writing that God revealed himself. . . . When God revealed himself in Christ, the method was the same. . . . historical revealing, done in life, and not in writing. . . . When Christ had finished his course, this greatest chapter in revelation was finished.”^[7] Clarke believed that we should not be surprised if other writings come through the continued Christian experience that equal or surpass those in the New Testament. For him, there could be yet richer contemplation and expression of the meaning of Christ to the human soul in its sense of the holy.

In What Shall We Think of Christianity? Clarke summarized his understanding of Christianity in five basic affirmations.^[8] Each of these is derived from what he calls the “common experience” or “the Christian experience” or simply “experience.”^[9] This “common experience constitutes the fundamental element in the Christian life, and in the Christian doctrine.”^[10] He writes:

Five great realities: the Fatherhood of God, the Saviorhood of Jesus Christ, the Friendhood of the Spirit, the Supremacy of Love, and the Transforming Power. …I doubt whether there were any other truths that deserve to rank with these.^[11]

Clarke considered the idea of immortality “not made known by Jesus” but in the apostolic conscience by “their own fresh fullness and power in their experience with him.”^[12]

Clarke described his lifelong experience with the Bible in Sixty Years With the Bible: A Record of Experience.^[13] In his odyssey of moving from traditional conservatism (what he calls the “ancestral view”) to leading American Baptists into liberalism, Clarke moved gradually from an implicit acceptance of the Bible’s verbal inspiration to an utter rejection of it. He said, “In the course of my studies, I became aware that it could not possibly be true.”^[14] The implications of textual criticism and the exercise of exegesis convinced him that both disciplines were “quite incompatible with permanent confidence in verbal inspiration.”^[15] He tripped over “Essays and Reviews” by Anglican clergymen discussing biblical inspiration and never got to his feet again. His former views, he reasoned, arose as theologians framed a view to “account for the highest quality of the Bible in its noblest parts, and assume that that high quality ran through the whole—which it does not.”^[16]

Clarke reduced the apostolic witness to little more than creative meditation on their experience with Christ. He maintained that “we are as free to search out the truth of God as ever an apostle was, and that we may be as truly under the leading of God in doing so as the apostles were.”^[17] In a cavalier dismissal of conservative arguments for an identifiable orthodoxy in one’s view of Scripture and in theological declaration, Clarke contended, “Orthodoxy is a human institution, not a divine, and God has never set it up as a barrier in the way of thought concerning divine realities.”^[18]

It is no surprise that Clarke rejoiced in the shift from revealed, infallible propositions to human concepts of morality and exalted experience. “The old pressure of infallibility is not so heavy as it once was,” Clarke celebrated, “Readers do not take so seriously the attribution to God in the Bible of acts that a good being could not perform. Moral judgment [that is, a subjective sense of right and wrong] is claiming its rights [that is, “rights” to reinterpret biblical accounts that seemed morally repugnant to modern sensibilities by denying infallibility].”^[19]

Consistent with the existential rescue of religion from any necessity of a deposit of truth, Clarke comforted his readers, “The Scriptures are characterized by the freedom of life, rather than by any extraordinary precision of statement or accuracy of detail.”^[20] In boldness and in perfect consistency with his view of Scripture, Clarke wrote, “The Bible itself releases us from all obligation to maintain its complete inerrancy. . . . The Scriptures never claim accuracy for all their statements.”^[21] Given the number of factual discrepancies in the Old Testament as well as the New and the different levels of moral tone present in various narratives and even other literary types (imprecatory Psalms that curse God’s enemies), it is “plain that perfect accuracy of statement, or what is now named inerrancy, was not sought in the composition of Scripture.”^[22] Instead, the “free and natural method of the Bible has opened actual experience to our sight.” Such “divine realities in human life in all their freshness and power” instructs us more soundly, more worthily about true experience, and are more valuable to the Christian spirit “than what we call inerrancy would be.”^[23] “We have become Christians by the help of documents to which inerrancy does not belong.”^[24]

Clarke eventually arrived at such confidence in the human capacity to discern the character of God and the consequent “Christian” experience that he conceded that we really need no Bible at all. “But I think it must be God’s will that the time shall come when the means gives way to the end; when confidence in the living God himself stands independent of any views that we may hold of the book in which we have read most about him. All Christians need a faith in God that no changes in knowledge of the Bible can disturb, and I am sure that God intends such a faith for us all.”^[25]

Shailer Mathews: The De-Theologizing of Christianity

As liberalism began to redefine virtually all of the orthodox doctrines of the Christian faith, the challenge for concerned observers was to find a distilled statement of Modernist thought on the major Christian doctrines. Shailer Mathews (1863–1941) wrote, “No sooner than men thus study the Bible than facts appear which make belief in verbal inerrancy untenable.”^[26] Nevertheless, Mathews produced an “Affirmation of Faith.” He described modernism as the “de-theologizing of the Christian movement” with the glad result that “widespread sectarianism will vanish and cooperation appear.” He looked upon positive formative doctrine as “ecclesiastical chauvinism” and saw modernism’s de-theologizing as constituting a “more intelligent attempt to put the attitudes and spirit of Jesus into the hearts of men.” As the doctrinal demands of Christianity decreased, “Christianity will grow more in its moral demands.”^[27] It is notable, not only because it denies historical orthodoxy, but because it dismisses any importance to theological persuasion and its consequent omission of the historic doctrinal formulations of orthodoxy.

Mathews observed, “We may be decreasingly interested in the metaphysics of Jesus Christ, but we shall be all the more determined to show that his life and teachings reveal the divine purpose in humanity.”^[28] On the Bible, Mathews wrote, “I believe in the Bible when interpreted historically, as the product and the trustworthy record of the progressive revelation of God through developing religious experience.”^[29] This makes every part of the Scripture malleable and open to correction by later experiences of the writers that correct earlier ones. It completely denudes the Bible of any propositional authority, and changes the theological task from careful synthesis of an increasingly full body of truth into a literary testimony of religious experience. Instead of any robust affirmation of the Trinity, Mathews wrote, “I believe in God, immanent in the forces and processes of nature, revealed in Jesus Christ and human history as Love.”^[30] Bypassing orthodox affirmations of the person of Christ, Mathews was satisfied to state, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who by his teaching, life, death, and resurrection, revealed God as Savior.”^[31] Though the confession disregards historic Christian confession of faith, it is good that such revisionism is stated unabashedly so that modernistic Christianity can be rejected as Christianity at all. Reject biblical revelation and soon reject all.

Conclusion

The purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention centers on a united effort to preach the gospel at home and internationally with conscientious assurance that those who are drawn to the truth by the Holy Spirit, thus believing the gospel, will be rescued from an eternity of just wrath to an eternity of worship and undiluted joy in the presence of God. Eternity consists of those two options; the message we preach in that light must correspond to the absolute veracity of the Bible, God’s living and active word of divine revelation. We preach such a sober reality because we believe unreservedly that the Bible is a clear and unerring message from God. Our unity locally, organizationally, and missiologically depends on a complex of factors, but at the most foundational level it rests on universal and lively confidence in the inerrancy of Scripture. Unity in our confession of faith—a vitally important aspect of effective mission—depends on such a commitment, and confidence in our servant-leadership both locally and denominationally must rest on continued and clear affirmation of doctrine built on that uncompromised confidence. Departure from such a clear and strongly-held cognitive and heart conviction will make us become something other than Christian. History proves it in a multiplicity of declining denominations and in the relatively recent past of the Southern Baptist Convention. Following the Pauline admonition given to Timothy in pew, pulpit, denominational desk, and mission assignment will, by the blessing of God, preserve us from sinful and destructive faithlessness and enervating decline.

^3:10 You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, . . . ¹³ evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. ^4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: ² preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. ³ For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, ⁴ and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. ⁵ As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Tim 3:10–4:5)

*****

1. William Newton Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922; copyright 1898). ↑

2. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 2. ↑

3. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 4. ↑

4. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 5. ↑

5. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 10. ↑

6. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 12. ↑

7. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 14. ↑

8. William Newton Clarke, What Shall We Think of Christianity? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900). ↑

9. Clarke, What Shall We Think of Christianity? 56–60. ↑

10. Clarke, What Shall We Think of Christianity? 56. ↑

11. Clarke, What Shall We Think of Christianity? 61. ↑

12. Clarke, What Shall We Think of Christianity? 61. ↑

13. William Newton Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible: A Record of Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909). ↑

14. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 42. ↑

15. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 47. ↑

16. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 46. ↑

17. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 225. ↑

18. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 225. ↑

19. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 234. ↑

20. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 35. ↑

21. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 35. ↑

22. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 36. ↑

23. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 36. ↑

24. Clarke, An Outline of Christian Theology, 37. ↑

25. Clarke, Sixty Years With the Bible, 219. ↑

26. Shailer Mathews, The Faith of Modernism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925), 38. ↑

27. Mathews, The Faith of Modernism, 178–179. ↑

28. Mathews, The Faith of Modernism, 175. ↑

29. Mathews, The Faith of Modernism, 180, emphasis added. ↑

30. Mathews, The Faith of Modernism, 180. ↑

31. Mathews, The Faith of Modernism, 180. ↑